Documentary Validates Role of Placebo Effect in Controlling Health

A documentary released this year questions the exclusive role of genetics and medicine in determining and treating disease. It examines alternative healthcare methods that use the body’s own healing system — the same healing system that responds to the placebo effect, which is responsible for one-third of all healings overall, says cellular biologist and former Stanford University professor Dr. Bruce Lipton.

The Living Matrix mixes new science, recovery stories, and 3D motion graphics to take the provocative discussion of quantum physics, energy fields, and consciousness as it applies to health and healing. Filmmakers say it is the first documentary to bring together academic and independent researchers, practitioners, and science journalists whose work reveals scientific evidence that energy and information fields, not genetics, control health and wellbeing.

Through interviews with Dr. Bruce Lipton and researcher Lynne McTaggart, among others, along with dramatized video vignettes, the film demonstrates the effectiveness of “bioenergetic medicine” in cases where traditional medicine has not succeeded. The film documents the stories of people who recovered from chronic illness, including a five-year-old boy born with cerebral palsy, an osteopathic doctor with a brain tumor, and a housewife bedridden with chronic fatigue syndrome.

To encourage discussion, and reach a wider audience, the filmmakers have launched a program where you can host your own group screenings, arranged through the film’s Web site. Besides home screenings, the filmmakers have urged special interest communities such as health care conferences, healing arts organizations, and spiritual groups to host viewings. Support materials, such as posters, flyers, and discussion guides, have been made available to support the screenings. A Facebook Fan Page has also fostered discussion and word-of-mouth support since the film’s release in March, 2009.

“This is a time of great activism and a time when people are demanding safer, more effective and affordable health care choices in line with their personal beliefs,” said the film’s director, San Francisco-based Greg Becker. “Through our film and screenings community forums, we want to spread the word that many alternative health care options are backed by reliable scientific research and have real potential to improve lives where conventional medicine might not.”

“Consumers increasingly are relying on energy medicine and other complementary and alternative medicines to gain greater control over their health, to treat chronic diseases for which traditional medicine has few options, to reduce healthcare costs, and to avoid the side effects of drugs and other conventional modalities,” said producer, Harry Massey, an entrepreneur in bioenergetics and informational healthcare in Poole, England. “The Living Matrix puts the facts in their hands and encourages viewers to become active participants in their health care choices.”